notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 2, 2010
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SIMONE WEIL
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“It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us but revealed our true level.”
Which is why those I criticize will never forgive me – and I don't expect them to.
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OSCAR WILDE
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“Women represent the triumph of matter over mind.”
The same could be said of men.
*
The ease with which we make mistakes; and even more astonishing: the ease with which we are successful in convincing ourselves we are doing the right.
Homo sapiens?
Seldom.
Homo ignoramus?
Always!
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A.N. WHITEHEAD
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“Our reasoning grasps at straws for premises and floats on gossamers for deductions.”
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COMMENTS
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To know better is not the same as to know, or for that matter, to be closer to the truth.
*
Our tragedy: those who pretend to know lead those who pretend to understand.
Or, the unthinking leads the thoughtless.
This is no secret. It was known and stated thousands of years ago:
“When the blind lead the blind...”
*
Whenever I see the photo of an Armenian writer in the company of a boss or bishop, I can’t help thinking, “There goes the neighborhood.”
*
If you think A and I think C, the truth may not be in the neighborhood of B but somewhere beyond Z.
*
You say you are free but all I see when I look at you is the invisible ring in your nose and the harness on your back.
#

[levon]

Re: elegy

“Women represent the triumph of matter over mind.”

Haha, good one.

You're a good writer, bro, but all your writings are so very pessimistic in nature. It might even suffice to say that you come off with an air of arrogance, yet deny any arrogance at all.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 3, 2010
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DIARY
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Finished reading Siblin's book on the Bach Cello Suites and Casals.
A remarkable achievement by a remarkable writer.
To write the book, Siblin not only read everything on the subject, he also travelled all over the world, attended lectures and symposia, visited museums and libraries housing Bach manuscripts, interviewed cellists, Bach expert, and Casals biographers, joined a Bach choir and learned to sing a cantata in German, took lessons by a cellist, and studied countless CDS. A veritable Odyssey by a phenomenally brilliant researcher. Reminds me of the dictum that if you want to achieve anything in life you must be a fanatic.
While reading his many footnotes and divagations, I was reminded of Nabokov's translation of Pushkin.
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READING ZARIAN'S NOTEBOOKS
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“I have a deep antipathy for Kafka whom I have tried but failed to read..”
And yet his (Zarian's) experiences in the Homeland and Diaspora are quintessentially Kafkaesque.
I suspect like all nationalists Zarian was deeply suspicious of xxxs.
*
“The majority of men don't think; they prefer to rely on someone else's thoughts. Thinking is a habit they seem to have lost – probably out of fear, in case they get into trouble by thinking the wrong thoughts.”
*
After our Golden Age and Silver Age we must now be at the summit of our Garbage Age – and as Zarian suggests in his TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD, it’s not even garbage picked up from our own streets.
In the Homeland we are at the mercy of neo-commissars; in the Diaspora, mini-sultans.
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CHURHCILL TO AN ADMIRAL
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“Don’t talk to me about naval tradition! It’s nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash!”
Bravo beh!
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 4, 2010
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THE PAPACY
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I have been reading a book on the Borgias and Renaissance popes, and I can't help wondering why there are still people who take Vatican pronouncements seriously. My only explanation: there is no limit to human ignorance and stupidity.
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ON FAITH
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Faith is a placebo which, unlike opium, is legal. This is a well-known secret to its administrators but not to its consumers. This may explain why when Mother Teresa lost her faith, she confided only to her confessor.
*
WHY I WRITE
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When asked why I write, I say: “Writing has become a habit I can't give up.” When told that's not a good enough reason, I have no choice but to agree. On the other hand, if I were to say “I write to save the nation,” I would be accused of megalomania run amok. How dare I think I can succeed where far better men than myself have failed. Not all questions have good answers.
*
WHAT HAS MY ARMENIAN IDENTITY
MEANT TO ME
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When I dealt with Armenian publishers, editors, bosses, bishops, benefactors and their assorted hirelings and flunkies, I became an alcoholic, developed an ulcer, and was hospitalized on several occasions. Now that I keep my distance, I am both healthier and happier. But even more important, I have a more objective view of myself and my fellow men. Also, I can afford the luxury of relying on my own judgment, which fallible as it probably is, it is my own and not someone else's, who in addition to being a fool may also be a crook, a bloodsucker, and a gravedigger.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Haha, good one.

You're a good writer, bro, but all your writings are so very pessimistic in nature. It might even suffice to say that you come off with an air of arrogance, yet deny any arrogance at all.

may i have a sample of my arrogance?
a line or two will do.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 5, 2010
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BACK TO BACH
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He composed, he said, “for the greater glory of God and the instruction of his fellow men.” But he was better known as an organist rather than as a composer. Now completely forgotten composers were far better known and compensated than he was. Even his own sons, themselves professional musicians of some renown, looked down on his unfashionable style. Ladies and gentlemen of the court (on whom composers were financially dependent) demanded music that was more easily understood and played, like Haydn and Mozart. As a result, a great many of his works were buried, forgotten, and lost. And when a hundred years after his death, some of his masterpieces were resurrected by among others Mendelssohn, celebrated poets and philosophers like Heine and Hegel failed to appreciate them. I am now told even rock musicians borrow and steal from Bach. Entire books have been written about such marginal works as THE MUSICAL OFFERING and the CELLO SUITES.
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SARTRE ON BACH
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“He taught how to find originality within an established discipline; actually – how to live.”
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SCHWEITZER ON BACH
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“In his strict polyphony a volcanic emotion and thought were embedded.”
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STEVEN ISSERLIS
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I have been listening to his rendition of the CELLO SUITES. Too “correct” and mechanical to be of any interest. I much prefer the “perpetual rubato” of Casals which gives the Suites the natural flow of human speech thus making them more human and accessible.
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TWO THINGS TO AVOID
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Clichés – unless in an ironic context.
Self-assessments – unless negative.
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A QUESTION OF IDENTITY
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I question the Armenian identity of readers whose every word drips with the concentrated venom of seven Turkish vipers.
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MONTHERLANT
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“It is important for a man, at least once in his life, to have believed he is about to die: parenthetically, this is one of the gifts war gives to man.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 6, 2010
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AN ANGRY OBJECTION
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A reader writes:
“When you speak of Ottomanism and Sovietism – are you sure you are not projecting your own problems on the rest of us? I too was born and raised in an Armenian family and I feel neither Ottomanized nor Sovietized.”
There may be two explanations for that: (one) you are either an exception to the rule – and when I write I speak of rules not of exceptions, and (two) you are in denial. Though your inability to entertain ideas that are not your own may well be seen as a symptom of Ottomano-Sovietism.
*
My function as a writer is to make the unconscious conscious; or to light a candle, not to convince you to like what you see. I can give you an explanation. What I cannot give you is understanding.
*
I define Ottomanism and Sovietism as two belief systems that legitimize intolerance or the unshakable conviction that it is their right and duty to silence those who do not believe in their fallacies. In that sense, both the Sultan and Stalin are not dead; they are very much alive in all of us as assumptions that intolerance is not a vice but one of the cardinal virtues.
*
Ottomanism and Sovietism are not the only two aberrations to which we subscribe and from which we suffer. Even more dangerous and far more insidious is Levantinism – the notion that Capital and God are one, that the profit motive is a respectable one, and that benefactors and their hirelings are not empty suits but royalties.
*
Dzour nesdink shidag khosink.
Very much like the Yanks in the McCarthy era, we too have a HUAC or a House Un-Armenian Activities Committee, whose members belong to a church, political party, or philanthropic organization, and sometimes all three at once, who believe it is their patriotic duty to silence those who, by disagreeing with their dogmas, plot the destruction of the land.
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In a French magazine I read the following headline about a grizzly murder: “He was the most subservient husband but one day he beheaded her.”
We too were the most loyal, that is to say, subservient subjects of the Empire...But to paraphrase an old Chinese proverb: “No honeymoon under heaven is endless.” To quote another familiar French saying: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
The Sultan and Stalin are dead. Long live our mini-sultans and neo-commissars!
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As for the charge that I have en eye only for the negative: that's like saying to an oncologist, “You have an eye only for tumors.”
#

[levon]

Re: elegy

may i have a sample of my arrogance?
a line or two will do.

Here ya go

allow me to share a professional secret with you.
the greatest insult that a reader can deliver to a writer
is to ignore him.
i once stumbled into an armenian forum
that was a vipers' nest of hostile readers
who treated me like a leper.
but ever since i shared this secret with them,
i have been left alone.
peace is wonderful!

[KanadaHye]

Re: elegy

Here ya go

allow me to share a professional secret with you.
the greatest insult that a reader can deliver to a writer
is to ignore him.
i once stumbled into an armenian forum
that was a vipers' nest of hostile readers
who treated me like a leper.
but ever since i shared this secret with them,
i have been left alone.
peace is wonderful!

I actually liked that bit, you have to read over like 3 times to make sense of it

[levon]

Re: elegy

I actually liked that bit, you have to read over like 3 times to make sense of it

I liked it too, but it delivers exactly what he asked of me.